arrest of development, the atrophy of all inhibitive power except the
power of fear, are real: the education is sham. Those who have been
taught most know least.




Antichrist

Among the worst effects of the unnatural segregation of children in
schools and the equally unnatural constant association of them with
adults in the family is the utter defeat of the vital element in
Christianity. Christ stands in the world for that intuition of the
highest humanity that we, being members one of another, must not
complain, must not scold, must not strike, nor revile nor persecute nor
revenge nor punish. Now family life and school life are, as far as the
moral training of children is concerned, nothing but the deliberate
inculcation of a routine of complaint, scolding, punishment,
persecution, and revenge as the natural and only possible way of dealing
with evil or inconvenience. "Aint nobody to be whopped for this here?"
exclaimed Sam Weller when he saw his employer's name written up on a
stage coach, and conceived the phenomenon as an insult which reflected
on himself. This exclamation of Sam Weller is at once the negation of
Christianity and the beginning and the end of current morality; and so
it will remain as long as the family and the school persist as we know
them: that is, as long as the rights of children are so utterly denied
that nobody will even take the trouble to ascertain what they are, and
coming of age is like the turning of a convict into the street after
twenty-one years penal servitude. Indeed it is worse; for the convict
may have learnt before his conviction how to live in freedom and may